In addition, the attack on Bank of America, is out of place. I understand the point that the author is trying to make, but this is juvenile. Claiming that BoA practices lead to our country's economic downturn and somehow suggesting that EA's practices are comparable in that respect is pure sensationalism.

Eventually a similar level of oversight that we have for TV and Radio broadcasting will apply to commercial internet. I doubt it will significantly impact online anonymity. Many networks are being developed (Tor) and will continue to innovate to get around censorship.

The school had absolutely no right to coerce the student. A Facebook account has as much protection against privacy invasion as a personal diary or other items covered by the 4th Amendment - at least from the perspective of a third party (i.e. the school).

Even if the student violated Facebook's Terms and Services, the student's account does not automatically become open to the public - which is what the action's of the school imply should have been the case.

The only legal recourse in this situation would have been for the school to contact Facebook. At which point it would be up to Facebook to hand over the information.

Protecting copies through DRM doesn't really make sense. If I want to borrow a friend's book (physical copy in this analogy) I can do so without paying anything to the author. He might lend this book to a dozen other people in the book's lifespan. People share things, whether it is a physical book or a song. In trying to prevent sharing, however, DRM stifles creativity and exerts unfair restrictions how this software can be used from platform to platform.

The biggest concern is privacy. With the onslaught of invasive legislation there is good reason to believe that third party hosting companies will be much more willing to turn over everything I have on a simple request rather than fight for the protection of user privacy.

With Google Drive coming out to rival Dropbox and other storage services this issue is going to return to the spotlight. Interesting enough, in the case of Google and other bigger storage providers, there is an economic incentive to stand up for user rights. If users' rights are forfeited too quickly, the latter will pursue legal action against Google creating a pretty hefty sum of legal fees. For Google, Dropbox, etc. it would make more financial sense to pick a fight with the DOJ than with the millions of users.

So, while I'm skeptical that the privacy concern will ever be resolved, I do have some hope in bigger storage companies when it comes to user rights.